Launching a World’s-First Website in Less Than Three Months

You’ve likely heard the adage of the cobbler’s kids having the worst shoes. For those in the services industries, this can especially be the case. Client projects take up the majority of resources and overhead budgets are monitored closely. And yet, how can you be expected to be viewed as experts in your field when you don’t practice what you preach? This is the conundrum that so many face.

For Studio Science, the area of practicing what it preached was with its website, giving itself the kind of marketing makeover it had done so often for its clients.

The Challenge

Studio Science’s website was falling short in several key areas. As a consultancy that excels in digital experiences, UX, and design, these were problematic. The setup and construction of the previous website required extensive developer involvement (with resources not always accessible) and provided a handful of issues, including an inability to:

1. Scale content efficiently, personalize experiences, and customize page layout and content for specific use cases
2. Incorporate and expand its evolving brand and design
3. Integrate seamlessly with the broader marketing and sales technology stack 

The consultancy knew what it needed from its next website, but there was another challenge. The contract with its previous CMS provider was ending in a few short months, meaning the new site would have to be up and live before the old one went dark. This also happened to be right after the holiday season, meaning valuable production days would be lost in the midst of winter celebrations. If this was the cobbler prioritizing new shoes for his children, those shoes were a rush order. 

The Solution  

Studio Science began a strategic partnership with digital experience platform Optimizely in early 2024 that included Studio Science providing implementation, design, and strategy services for customers using Optimizey’s technology. This meant Studio Science was quickly becoming an expert in all that Optimizely provides.  

Studio Science chose to replatform its website to Optimizely, leveraging the newly launched Optimizely software-as-a-service (SaaS) CMS platform. The SaaS CMS was the latest product offering from Optimizely, designed to increase flexibility and personalized content for marketers. Among the features utilized by Studio Science in the site development were:

• Modern WYSIWYG editing with Visual Builder
• Rapid iteration/feedback loops between marketing, design, development with deployment-free updates
• Hassle-free hosting and preview builds with Netlify
• Fast content delivery with Graph
• Ready for next phase, data-driven personalization use cases

A core team of 5-7 Studio Science employees – including developers, UX designers, content strategists, and marketing stakeholders – made up Studio Science’s implementation team and followed an aggressive sprint approach to finish in time.

The team collaborated tightly to build the Studio Science website design system, experimenting with new frameworks and AI-boosted design/development tools to achieve the timeline constraints. This design system uses a common token approach for items like size, spacing, and colors, ensuring a clear and consistent implementation experience on the site. Studio Science applied its creative and innovative approaches that it brings to all client engagements, creating a foundation to use in the future.  

Optimizely’s block approach to page building allowed the Studio Science team to make content changes to multiple pages across the site at one time, while also more easily driving visitors from one page to another seamlessly. And its Visual Builder made previewing pages and adjusting content possible in real time without leaving the back end. Components at each point support a theme option, allowing for variability in page structure while staying true to brand identity.

The move to a new platform gave Studio Science the opportunity to completely reinvent its website strategy. The team dove deep into its content strategy, site architecture, and design best practices in a way that wasn’t starting completely from scratch, but was a massive overhaul from the previous site. As such, everything from existing content to integrations and accessibility was upgraded and optimized to fit into the new framework. 

The Outcomes

Studio Science launched its new site in less than three months from initial strategy to go-live. In doing so, the company became the world’s first to both launch a website on Optimizely’s SaaS CMS and the first partner to implement the technology for any client.

“Not only is this new site a much more accurate view into who we are as a CX company, but as we launch SaaS sites for our clients moving forward, they can feel confident that we both have the experience and aren’t doing anything we wouldn’t, and didn’t, do for ourselves,” said Steve Pruden, CEO of Studio Science.

Equally as impressive as the timeframe in which it occurred was the performance after the fact. Studio Science’s page-load speeds increased by 20%, with the team actually designing a transition to visually show visitors the movement from one page to another because the load time was so quick. The consultancy also saw a 15% increase in organic traffic and 10% jump in lead conversions within the first two months, while simultaneously eliminating tens of hours each month in manual content updates.

The Studio Science website is now faster, more scalable, and optimized for engagement, with a look and feel that matches the design prowess in which it is associated. This has allowed for a marketing team that no longer needs developer intervention at every turn and can now make changes more quickly and effectively.

The cobbler’s kids are now decked out with a new pair of impressive-looking shoes.